Drawing upon decades of experience, RAND provides research services, systematic analysis, and innovative thinking to a global clientele that includes government agencies, foundations, and private-sector firms.

The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

Read More

This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

Owing to widespread public concern about the adequacy of protections for human research subjects and recent instances of serious injury to subjects at several major research institutions, lawsuits against investigators, institutional review boards, and academic institutions are becoming increasingly common. Several claim-promoting conditions are ripe to promote the further growth of this litigation and raise the stakes for research institutions. While this litigation may serve a valuable compensation function for injured subjects, it will also have profound effects on institutional review boards, leading to a more legalistic, mechanistic approach to ethical review that does not further the interests of human subjects or scientific progress.

This article was published outside of RAND. The full text of the article can be found at the link above.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation external publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

Related Topics

Stay Informed

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.